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Framed photograph of the William Clapp House, about 1870, showing the house shortly before the Italianate vestibule was added. You can see the main portion of the house, which was built in 1806, and the ell at the rear, which was built about 1838-1840. The photograph shows the Clapp family at the front of the house and the pear orchard on the left. On the right are the carriage sheds, which housed the family conveyances. The barn is in the rear of the property. The acorn post fence, of which our current fence is a reproduction, appears in the photograph as does the wonderful stone fence, which bounded the property along Boston Street and then along Willow Court.
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Silhouette of William Clapp
Cut paper with eglomise surround
Gift of Frank L. Clap, 1953
Captain Clapp was forty years old at the time this portrait was made. We don’t know if it may have been for a special occasion.
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The Society took down a wall between rooms to create one large meeting room. The place where the floor boards change direction in the middle of the room is the location of the missing wall.
In 1806 William Clapp (1779-1860) was just turning thirty years old. The son of Capt. Lemuel Clap, William had built up the family business into the largest tannery in Dorchester. The prosperous young man was about to embark on a new phase of his life. William had just become engaged to Elizabeth Humphreys, the daughter of James Humphreys, a respected Deacon of the first Parish Church. The marriage joined two of Dorchester’s oldest families.
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William Clapp, aged 79 years and Elizabeth, aged 75 years
Taken just two years before his death, William was 79, and Elizabeth was 75 at the time they sat for this portrait. It is the only know image of the couple who built this house.
Photo reproduction of the original ambrotype
Taken, May 7, 1858
Gift of Frank L. Clapp, 1952
Upon their betrothal, William began to build a new home on land deeded to him by his father Lemuel. He engaged Samuel Everett, a talented housewright, to design the building. Everett incorporated the prevailing neoclassical or Adamesque style inspired by English buildings. Boston was in the forefront of the new style, and both William and his builder would have been well-acquainted with its principles. In fact, the style had been almost single-handedly promoted in American by Boston architect Charles Bulfinch, who had designed the Massachusetts State House and all of Boston’s Federal-era public buildings. Builders across the nation emulated the style, making Bulfinch the major influence on architectural taste in the young republic.
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Proposed Rough Elevations of the Proposed House
These rough sketches show how William Clapp’s house evolved from early conceptin to completion. Can you find any differences from the way the house was actually built? Most homes at this time were designed by skilled carpenters called housewrights and not by architects. The housewrights adapted the latest styles and designs found n architectural pattern books to meet the taste and pocketbooks of their clients.
The Clapp House was built using bricks from the brickyard in South Boston that was operated by William’s brother Roger. The east and north sides of the house were sheathed in clapboard, and painted, as was the fashion. Although often called a farmhouse, the Clapp House is essentially a large free-standing city home, emulating the fine brick homes that were being built along Washington Street in the South End and on Beacon Hill at this time. The symmetrical arrangement of windows, the hipped roof, and the siting on a small rise are all typical of high-style Federal homes. While William’s house is more modest in scale, he did incorporate as many of the stylish Neoclassical elements as he could afford. These include the double parlor arrangement, dentil molding and comb-molding details in the south parlor, and the fanlight and sidelights of the front door. The original columned portico was replaced by the present Italianate entryway in the 1870s.
William and Elizabeth were married in the best parlor on December 15, 1806. The house remained in the possession of the Clapp family for four generations until 1953, when it became the property of the Dorchester Historical Society.
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First-floor plan of the William Clapp House
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Straw Matting Fragment
Made in China, mid-19th century
Straw matting was a common floor covering in the 1800s.. It was used in all the bedrooms of the Clapp House. This mat dates from the refurbishing of the houses in the 1860 but would have been very similar to the original matting installed by William and Elizabeth.
The William Clapp House Description
The William Clapp House at 195 Boston Street was built in 1806. Only two years earlier, Dorchester Avenue, located one block to the east, had been cut through this area as a turnpike or toll road linking Dorchester Lower Mills with Boston. The house provides physical evidence of a tanner and gentleman farmer’s Federal mansion house estate. By the time William built this house in 1806, the Clapps had been farming in Dorchester’s “little neck” for almost 200 years. An extended family compound evolved, with the new mansion house and old Willow Court at its center.
The William Clapp House is a typical two-story four-over-four Federal-style mansion house with a hip roof. It has a square plan facing SE to Boston Street, five bays wide by five bays deep with a later rear two-story, gable roof, wood frame, wing and lean-to. The main building contains four brick corner chimneys and central gable dormers on the SE and NW elevations. The SW and NW elevations of the main building are common bond brick. The building is made of brick and stands on a stone block foundation. Two sides of the main building were covered with clapboard siding in the 19th century. (The window sills were extended to accommodate the extra depth.) All elevations of the rear wing are covered with clapboards. The windows of the main block are sash type with six over six arrangement. Those of the SE and NE elevations have moulded trim and slipsills. The main entrance consists of an open porch and vestibule with double doors containing large translucent upper panels. The SW elevation has a central recessed single door and fanlight facing a large concrete terrace. Additionally, a large one-story, gable roof, wood frame, rectangular barn and a late 19th-century/early 20th-century carriage house are located on this property.
When the Dorhester Historical Society acquired the house in the 1940s. Frank Clapp stayed on as caretaker his death in 1953. The Society decided to take town a wall on the first floor on the north side of the house to create a meeting room by combining two rooms. The fact that the floor boards change direction in the middle of the room is evidence of the change.
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Note also the interior shutters on the windows in the front portion of the room, evidencing that the front room was probably a place to meet visitors. The back portion of the room, a former bedroom, did not need fancy touches.
The Clap Family in Dorchester
The town of Dorchester was settled in the first wave of the Great Migration by immigrants who sailed in the ship Mary and John from Plymouth, England, in the spring of 1630. Explorers and fishermen from England’s West Country had sailed to the waters off the northern coast of America since the early 15th century. With inspiration drawn from Rev. John White’s progressive Puritan showpiece town of Dorchester in Dorset, England, the new Dorchester was conceived and carefully structured to function as a New World utopia. The first settlers to emigrate demonstrated their commitment to this experimental society by organizing The First Church in Plymouth, England, March 20, 1630, on the eve before their embarkation.
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Boston Street, one of the oldest thoroughfares in Dorchester, has historic resources that span a considerable sweep of time, representing a diverse collection of housing types – both in terms of form and style. Boston Street was part of a system of roads that dated back to the mid-17th century. It was originally known as “the Causeway” or the “way to the Great Neck” (originally part of Dorchester, now South Boston, also called the Cow Pasture). It was called the Causeway because its route passed over the marshland of Little Neck, an area bounded by South Cove on the west and Old Harbor (Pleasure Bay) on the east. Boston Street was linked with Columbia Street, now Columbia Road, which in turn, was connected with Stoughton and Hancock Streets. Enterprise Street, which extends northwestward from Boston Street alongside the Dorchester Historical Society property, is a new name for a long stretch of an early street called Willow Court which led to the Clapp family’s grist mill and the marsh land associated with South Cove (South Bay).
This area has significant historical associations with the Clapp family who were tanners and gentlemen farmers and spinster descendants in this area from 1630 to the mid-20th century.
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Castle William with Dorchester Neck (now South Boston) behind.
The Clapp/Clapp Family: Early Settlers
Roger Clap, born in England in 1609, came to Dorchester on the Mary and John in 1630 and subsequently married Johanna Ford in 1633. They lived in the area near Boston Street until he became Captain of the Castle (later Fort William on Castle Island) in Boston Harbor in 1665. His Memoirs describe the settlement of Dorchester in 1630, the construction of the fort, and religious matters.
Roger was chosen to be a Dorchester town Selectman in 1637 when he was 28 years old, and he was re-elected fourteen times. He was chosen several times as Deputy from Dorchester to the General Court of Massachusetts Bay. At the first regular organization of the military of the colony, in 1644, he became the Lieutenant of the Dorchester company along with Humphrey Atherton as Captain and Hopestill Foster as Ensign. He later became Captain of the company and then Captain of the Castle, succeeding Capt. Richard Davenport, who was killed by lightning in July of 1665. He resigned in 1686, principally on account of the political troubles resulting under the administration of Sir Edmund Andros. Appointed as Governor of New England by James II after James came to the throne in 1685, Andros enacted laws and levied taxes without approval of a legislature, and he took from the local town meeting its power of taxation; he sent innocent men to jail and curbed the liberty of the press. He attacked titles to the land, pronouncing many of them void. Only the overthrow of King James II in favor of William and Mary in 1689 changed the conditions in New England. By then Roger was comfortably retired, and he died in Boston in 1691.
Nicholas Clap arrived from Dorset, England, in 1633. He followed his cousin Roger, who had come with the original Dorchester settlers in 1630. Like most early settlers, Nicholas was granted parcels of land scattered all over the district. Each parcel filled a different agricultural need. The communal cow pasture was located on “Dorchester Neck” (now South Boston). Meadow lots on the south marsh (today’s South Bay Mall) provided marsh hay to feed live stock and reeds for thatch. The family also had timber lots in Stoughton (then part of Dorchester) and South Boston.
William’s old Federal mansion descended to his son Lemuel, and then to Lemuel’s son William Channing Clapp.